


The Laws of Attraction

by jasminepeony14



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M, Minor Violence, Minor cursing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasminepeony14/pseuds/jasminepeony14
Summary: Of all things in the Shadow World, its laws of attraction are what perplex Clary the most.
Relationships: Alastair Carstairs/Matthew Fairchild, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. Prologue

Of all things in the Shadow World, its laws of attraction are what perplex Clary the most. For one, there are more the just two genders. Alpha, beta, omega—each carrying tradition, setting limitations not biologically but stereotypically, laying inescapable traps of expectations. Throw in the dynamics of the five races, intra and inter, and it’s an overwhelming landscape to navigate. Amongst werewolves, alphas rule the roost, but under the hill, omegas have the last say. Infertile, vampires and warlocks are less sensitive to classification when configuring hierarchy but nonetheless hold it in the highest esteem for etiquette’s sake, and losing sight of your manners might very well result in the loss of limb or life. Shadowhunters view each designation as serving a particular function, necessary and valuable, but absolutely inflexible. Lines are boundaries not meant to be crossed, and Clary learns very quickly that her temper and intractability are unbecoming in a beta, who ought to be, ideally, a mild-mannered mediator, born for the art of compromise.

Then there’s sex, passion, and love—all far more visceral than the fairytales and legends ever mentioned. Eyes and nerves can compute compatibility in a chance meeting of glances, and desire is administered unequally more often than not, but periodically there are those encounters that forge magnetic force. An ancient gravity pulls two souls together, and they circle around one another, dancing feverously until they decide whether they’ll oblige or fly from fusion. A soul can feel more than one pull at once, Clary learns in time, and a tug at your heart doesn’t mean you aren’t being dragged toward destruction. Love doesn’t lose any of its nuances just because she is now capable of feeling it course through her very veins. The pain it can wrought certainly does not wain. Quite contrary, the blade is sharper. The cut deeper.

Yet, she holds desperately to the whispers of the One. The draw—the calling—that is true and pure. The mate who is meant most for you. She is told that such a pairing doesn’t exist. That “love at first sight” is just a romanization of basic biology concocted by mundanes and eons from the complicated reality. But prone so obscenely to defiance, Clary dares to believe that fairy tale will unveil itself as truth. And it does, not once, not twice, but five times.

Yet, each time, Clary fails to feel gratified. Instead, a bitter weed is sowed, sprouts, and creeps as each story unfolds. The longer she watches, the longer she listens, the more she finds herself overcome and overrun with the tendrils of green, because none of the stories are hers. To be hers, they can’t be love stories. No, to be hers, they would have to be tales of a darkening heart. Of jaded green and treachery.

And, in the end, she is not quite so foolish to let ego cloud her hindsight—these aren’t her stories.


	2. Alec and Magnus

Alec tries to fight it. He’s terrified of the lightening that strikes when he locks eyes with Magnus Bane. Of the exhilarating desire that ties his tongue as Magnus, unabashed, gazes at him. The alpha in him preens and pleads, desiring nothing more than to prove his worth to the rapturous omega, but Alec clings staunchly to preconceptions. Magnus is not a choice in mate that his parents would look kindly upon—male, infertile, warlock. Each attribute more grievous than the last. So Alec declares war on his own soul.

Clary is the first to the sense the truth, and it comes alight as she hovers over Luke, twisting and threatening to Turn, the beast held at bay only by Magnus’ magic. Drained with each passing second, Magnus starts to pitch, but Alec is there to catch him.

“What do you need?” Alec demands stiffly.

“I need your strength,” Magnus wheezes, proffering a shaky hand. A pause burgeons as their stares lock, fire lighting ferociously in their blood. Alec clasps Magnus’ hand.

“Take what you need.” So, conjoined, they keep Luke on the human side of being until Jace and Simon arrive with the required tonic. Duty done, Magnus collapses into Alec, and for a moment, amidst all the relieved confusion, Alec allows himself to indulge. He holds onto Magnus dearly, cradling him against his chest and cherishing each stolen caress. Clary sees all of this. She sees Alec holding all she longs for with each fiber of her existence and seethes as he lets it go and leaves it like trash.

He doesn’t deserve so precious a gift, she thinks. 

Her rage festers and feeds on the news that Alec is to marry someone who isn’t Magnus. She’s too furious to understand Alec and his insecurities. She doesn’t care to know that Alec has learned of the damning history shading his family name or that his parents’ sins have spurned him on a quest for honor. Redemption. She isn’t interested in considering that Alec, forced to re-evaluate everything he ever believed in or stood for, is flaying for solid ground and stumbling. She doesn’t think that every time he rejects an eager Magnus, Alec feels as if he has disemboweled himself, ripping a hole clean through gut and soul.

By the time he reaches the altar, he is the walking dead, his heartbeat near silent, the sight of his bride uninspiring. His breaths could very well be his last as the ceremony begins, the vows his eulogy. He is going to die, he realizes. He is going to die and leave behind a husk to finish out this half-life he had carved out in a misguided attempt to assuage his existential anxiety.

But then Magnus, courageously vulnerable, appears, and Alec finally chooses to live.

“Enough,” he says to quiet his mother’s objections. He takes hold of Magnus’ lapels and lays claim at last to the gift he had tried too long to toss away. They kiss like kissing were the gods’ ambrosia, lip and tongue melding and drinking in every exquisite sip. They kiss, and Clary is no longer the only who sees. Eyelids sliding shut, Maryse squeezes the bridge of her nose and takes a breath. Upon the exhale, she opens them.

“Well,” she announces, “no point in wasting a perfectly good wedding. The officiator and guests are already here. So are the De…Destined.” The Destined—the name of Clary’s dreams.

“No,” Alec argues, his embrace tightening around his omega. “I’m not giving my mate a recycled wedding.”

“Alexander,” Magnus interjects gently. “It’s alright. You’re my One. I don’t care if it’s here or on a beach in Monaco. As long it’s official—as long as I get to tell the world you’re mine and I’m yours—anywhere is fine by me. So long as I’m with you, it’s alright.”

So, Alec and Magnus marry then and there. Unable to exchange runes, they improvise with simple touch, tracing promises on hands and over hearts, and, somehow, it is more intimate. More meaningful. They marry, shadowhunter and Downwolder joined and recognized as Destined on Institute ground. A blessing. An unfathomable blessing. 

A blessing undeserved, Clary steams. After all his objections—after all the hurt he so selfishly inflicted on his One, Alec just gets to slip his family ring onto Magnus’ finger? Just gets to walk down the aisle hand in hand? No. _No._ There’s a reckoning that must be met.

Lorenzo Rey responds to Clary’s fire message within the hours she pens it. He comes with a posse, which he refers to elegantly as a “delegation.” They wrest Magnus from Alec’s bed in the early morning hours.

“What the hell are you doing?” Alec screams, hazel eyes gleaming with panic, pounding against the wall of magic that separates him and Magnus. “Let him go! Let go of my mate!”

“Your mate?” Lorenzo scoffs. “I don’t recall you courting him or asking for his hand. You just _took_ him, one of Lilith’s children, without asking for permission. Our omegas are not your whores, shadowhunter. You’ll treat them with the utmost respect.” Etiquette. Breach it, and you’ll likely lose your life.

“Let me go!” Magnus cries, twisting wretchedly as he tries to yank his arms and hands free from the hold of Lorenzo’s minions. “I’m centuries-years-old, damn it! Old enough to make my own decisions! And _I’m_ the High Warlock of Brooklyn! Who’s supposed to give him permission if not me! Let me go!”

“There’s protocol, Magnus,” Lorenzo rebuts with feigned sympathy. “Someone of your age should know that very well. If the shadowhunter wants you, a jewel of our people, then he better get on his knees and beg properly.”

Alec does not need to think. Does not need to weigh pride or dignity. In nothing more than his underwear, he hits his knees.

“Please,” he implores. “Please. He’s my One. _Please._ ” Lorenzo grins. A shadowhunter reduced to submission—what a gorgeous sight. He squares his shoulders.

“Your One, you say?” Lorenzo ponders aloud. “I suppose, then, there’s no keeping you apart—” The balm of hope buds in Alec’s chest, and his agony increases tenfold as Lorenzo nonchalantly plucks it away. “—for good. But if Magnus is your One—your Destined—then regard him as such. No courting? No betrothal token? A wedding intended for someone lesser? I think not. If you want your One, Alec Lightwood, then _earn_ him.”

Lorenzo and his delegation promptly pull Magnus into the vortex of a portal, and Alec’s wailing shakes the Institute’s very foundation.

“Magnus!” he roars. “NO!”

Clary startles awake and nearly feels a twinge of regret. Nearly.

Dawn comes, and Alec wastes not a single drop of daylight. Rallying the aide of his parabatai and sister, he goes straight to the only warlock who would dare be his ally.

“Magnus is in Spiral’s Labyrinth,” Catarina Loss tells him as she searches a bookcase of ancient, worn texts.

“Spiral’s Labyrinth?” Izzy repeats anxiously. “You mean the warlock version of the Guard? Why? Magnus has done nothing wrong!”

“They’ll pay for this,” Alec promises with the dark tone of an aggrieved alpha. “They’ll pay for every second he’s kept chained in a cell.”

“Spiral’s Labyrinth’s lower levels have cells, yes,” Catarina sighs, “but it’s far more than a prison. It’s the center of our learning and history—the heart of our culture. Magnus was taken there because it’s the one place shadowhunters have no access to. He’s ‘protected’ there. And he’s not being kept in the prison cell. Tessa Grey assures me his room is very, very comfortable.”

“I don’t care!” Alec hisses. “They took him against his will! Kidnapped him right out of our bed! Our wedding bed! Magnus—” His voice breaks, and he must stop and wait for his breath to steady. In this vast sea of longing, he cannot comprehend there was ever a time when he could bear to be without Magnus. Catarina regards with him sincere sympathy.

“You’ll get him back, Alec,” she says, “but, to do that, you need to understand the rules of the game you’re about to play.” She places a hand on his shoulder and a red book in his hands.

Entitled _The Four Favors_ , the book is an ancient text that outlines the warlock courting traditions that haven’t changed in a nearly a millennia: flower, feat, fee, and festival. “Flower” is somewhat of a misnomer allowed for the sake of alliteration and in fact is better described as a token, something small but significant to signal a suitor’s intent. Alec settles for the middle ground, scourging the local shadow market for expensive herbs and flora prized for their magical properties: borage to bestow fortitude, chamomile to cox forward wealth, mugwort to manage and enhance the mind, sage to sweep air and aura clean, rosemary to rally protective charms, and cinquefoil to call down dreams of a promised lover.

He arranges them and more into a beautiful bouquet and is allowed it to present to Magnus at Lorenzo’s mansion under close, unrelenting supervision. It has only been two days, but Magnus, while well, is clearly exhausted. Sleep must have alluded him, Clary thinks apologetically. It is not his fault for wanting what—who—is fated to him, but he cannot be allowed to fold so easily. Alec had disparaged their great gift, so he must be made to repent. And he does look tremendously remorseful as he hands the flowers over, his fingertips lingering against Magnus’ as the warlock accepts the arrangement.

“You alright?” Alec asks lowly. Smiling tightly, Magnus nods.

“Yes,” he answers hoarsely. “I’m okay.”

“Hold on just a little longer,” Alec urges. “I am coming. I’m coming for you.” 

If he hadn’t already been burning, then sight of Magnus once more being led away from him set Alec ablaze. Industriously, he manages to roll the second and third favors into one task, and unlike their predecessor, feat and fee are just as their names imply: a feat most magnificent to showcase the suitor’s strength and a fee so great as to prove the suitor can provide. 

To satisfy both, Alec seeks out an evil demon queen, Rangda, to retrieve a lost, undefeatable dagger called the Taming Sari from the queen’s treasure horde. He portals to the island of Java, and, while Clary is not there to witness the battle, she hears from Jace that it was a truly glorious, gory sight. Apparently, the evil queen employed an army of soldiers who possessed giant heads and little else, no bodies, just giant, gnashing teeth and trailing entrails. Alec comes back caked in ichor and clutching a dagger with rippling steel for a blade. He falls on bended knee to present it to Magnus, who takes it with golden cat eyes glittering with tear dust.

Not even Lorenzo can argue that Alec hasn’t proven his metal, and after that, only festival remains, which is hardly anything at all, because festival merely refers to the bonding ceremony. It is held at the Institute again, but this time around, there is no question for whom the garlands are being hung or whose love the candles are meant to illuminate. Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike fill the seats as Alec walks the aisle, and they way are there to witness the way his entire body shudders with bliss as Magnus at last comes to him and stays by his side.

  
Vows said for the second time, Alec holding Magnus’ face in his hands as they kiss long and deep, two becoming an inseparable one.


End file.
